Customer Experience Management

Customer Effort Score (CES):
Key figure for a customer's effort: definition, goal, example questionnaire, templates

Customer Effort Score CES
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Customer enthusiasm is also measured by the effort a customer puts into getting an answer to their request or a solution to their problem. With the Customer Effort Score (CES) you can quickly and easily question the interfaces between your company and your customers.

Definition: What is the Customer Effort Score (CES)

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is a method for measuring Effort that a customer has to make in order to receive an answer to their question or the solution to their problem/concern. The CES is therefore an important indicator for the Ease of interaction and the service orientation of a company at the contact points between products, brands, services and a company's customers. The Customer Effort Score (CES) is collected through customer surveys. Mostly as part of touchpoint surveys. The aim is to promote customer loyalty and customer satisfaction by reducing customer efforts at the contact points between customers and the company.

The Customer Effort Score (CES) is particularly relevant because at the moment the customer has a question or concern/problem, they pay a lot of attention to the handling or solution. A positive answer or solution usually leads to higher customer satisfaction, while a negative answer usually leads to significantly greater customer dissatisfaction due to the high level of attention. The prerequisite for an objective evaluation in the Customer Effort Score (CES) is that the product or service itself has a satisfactory quality, otherwise this will be included in the evaluation in the CES.

How can the customer effort score be determined?

CES survey after every customer interaction

The CES can be determined very easily through targeted and brief surveys of your customers. Essentially, companies should collect customer feedback after every interaction. At least where it is possible to always see an up-to-date scoring value. And to observe trends and tendencies at the same time.

Easily obtain CES feedback

Due to the small number of questions (usually just one), feedback on the Customer Effort Score can be obtained by sending a survey via email or SMS. Or it can happen during a customer's visit to your website, for example directly after an online ordering process. Immediately after completing the order, customers are redirected to a landing site where they can express their opinion via an online questionnaire. Below are some examples of how to obtain CES feedback.

Examples of CES questions to obtain the Customer Effort Score

Which of the following statements most accurately applies to the ordering process?
The ordering process went quickly and smoothly

exactly
true
rather applies
doesn't really apply
does not apply
not correct at all

The questions for determining the Customer Effort Score can be very different. The following example shows a question with 10 characteristic values.

Customer Effort Score on a 10-point scale


The feedback to determine the CES is obtained in a standardized manner using single-choice questions. But it can also be done in combination with a free text evaluation. QuestionPro offers a function for this, the “Dynamic Comment Box”, which is only displayed when customers click on an answer option. In the following example, a negative answer option. After the box has been activated by clicking on a negative answer option, customers can write text comments here and describe exactly what they disliked. The free text comments can then be qualitatively evaluated.

Customer Effort Score CES with free text answer


Another very simple way to determine the CES is, for example, the Like/Dislike answer option.

Customer Effort Score Like & Dislike question type

It is just as easy to determine the customer effort score using smiley ratings. In this example, customers have 5 response options.

Customer Effort Score CES Smiley Rating


If you want your customers to answer several questions at once to determine the Customer Effort Score, it is advisable to work with so-called "matrix questions". This is clear and easy to answer.

Customer Effort Score question


As you can see, there are a variety of ways to determine the customer effort score. We have prepared a sample CES questionnaire for you.

Of course, the Customer Effort Score does not only refer to the ordering process. The sample questions above can also be applied to support requests, complaints, customer service performance, information findability, contact availability and many other customer interactions.

Achieve a continuous improvement process through permanent CES surveys

A company that generally has low customer satisfaction can use the Customer Effort Score to evaluate problem areas at the interfaces between customers and the company. Once you have identified which of these touchpoints your customers need to put in the most effort to achieve a desired result (such as resolving a support case or ordering a product), you can start taking improvement measures. However, you should also track these using follow-up surveys. This way you can be sure that your measures actually work. This means you achieve a constant improvement process.

Differences between Customer Effort Score and Net Promoter Score

The Customer Effort Score (CES) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) are important key performance indicators (KPIs) with their own advantages and disadvantages. While the Customer Effort Score is more service-oriented and past-oriented, the Net Promoter Score is more oriented towards customer satisfaction and future business development.

The NPS represents the likelihood of a future recommendation by customers. “How likely are you to recommend company X to a friend or colleague? NPS is usually used to question loyalty to a brand and the company.

CES measures the factor of easy and quick handling of current or recently completed customer issues, which can be particularly informative for service departments to improve customer service and support. Although the Customer Effort Score is not an exact measure of customer satisfaction, you can draw conclusions about your customer satisfaction based on the smoothness of interactions between your customers and your company.

Recommendation: Use the Customer Effort Score and the Net Promoter Score together

The NPS is popular because it can easily analyse two important aspects: Customer loyalty and expected business development. Promoters tend to stay loyal to a business and are also a great source of free marketing through referrals to family and friends. A promoter is loyal to your business, but it is important to remember that they are not guaranteed to stay loyal if the customer experience leaves something to be desired.

The NPS therefore measures more the general feeling a customer has towards your company and thus cannot be used to measure a specific customer service experience. The CES, on the other hand, measures the ease with which customer problems can be solved. It can be extremely effective in understanding obstacles in the customer experience so that you can remove those obstacles and indirectly increase customer loyalty.

Customer Effort Score versus Net Promoter Score

1:1 live online presentation:
Determine Customer Effort Score (CES) quickly and easily with CX software from QuestionPro

As part of a 1:1 live online presentation, we would be happy to show you how you can quickly and easily measure the Customer Effort Score (CES) and clearly analyse and interpret the data from the Customer Effort Score. Arrange an individual appointment.



Test customer effort score software

If you have any questions about the Customer Effort Score, please feel free to contact us. Create your own Customer Effort Score (CES) and test QuestionPro now for 10 days free of charge and without automatic renewal!

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Customer Effort Score | CES | Customer enthusiasm | importance

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